Anders Eliasson facts for kids
Anders Erik Birger Eliasson (born April 3, 1947 – died May 20, 2013) was a famous Swedish composer. He wrote many different kinds of music, including symphonies, concertos, and pieces for orchestras.
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Life of a Composer
Anders Eliasson was born in Borlänge, Sweden. When he was young, his first musical ideas came from inside him. He would sing and listen to familiar songs on the radio. He didn't hear much classical music at first.
Early Musical Journey
When he was 9, Anders started playing the trumpet. He even created a small jazz band with his friends. By age 10, he was already writing arrangements for music. A jazz bass player taught him about chords, which are groups of notes played together. At 14, he began studying music theory, like harmony and counterpoint, with an organist named Uno Sandén.
Two years later, at 16, he moved to Stockholm to study privately with Valdemar Söderholm. This teacher helped him connect with "real music," like the classical pieces he first heard around age 12. One of the first important pieces he heard was Haydn’s Symphony No. 104. Under Söderholm, he spent five years deeply studying composers like Palestrina, Orlando di Lasso, and especially Johann Sebastian Bach. Eliasson felt Bach's music had the "highest form of energy."
Becoming a Professional Composer
In 1966, Anders Eliasson became a student of Ingvar Lidholm at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He also worked with the Electronic Music Foundation in Stockholm for several years.
His first big successes were a choir piece called Canto del vagabondo (written in 1979) and his First Symphony (from 1989). For his First Symphony, he won the Nordic Council Music Prize. This award recognized his music's "originality, authenticity, and clarity."
Anders Eliasson was a special guest composer at the Lapland Festival in 1991. He also taught as a visiting professor at Sibelius Academy in Helsinki during 1993 and 1994. In 1996, many of his works were performed at the "International Composer´s Festival Stockholm."
Later Works and Legacy
From 2000 onwards, Eliasson created many new pieces. These included a monodrama (a play for one singer) called Karolinas sömn (Karolina´s Sleep), which was first performed in 2012. He also wrote a lot of chamber music (music for a small group of instruments) and five large concertos. A concerto is a piece for a solo instrument and an orchestra. Some of his concertos were for trombone, saxophone, violin, and piano.
Anders Eliasson was a judge in the 2nd International Uuno Klami Composer Competition in 2008-2009. From 2005 until his death, he was the composer-in-residence for the Arcos Chamber Ensemble in New York. He passed away in Stockholm at the age of 66.
After his death, 'The International Anders Eliasson Society' was created in Vienna in 2016 to celebrate and promote his music.
Eliasson's Musical Ideas
When Anders Eliasson was a student, he learned about different styles of music, including classical and modernist ideas. He found that he preferred the older, classical music. He felt it was much better than the "fashionable" new styles of his time.
His View on Modern Music
He noticed that many modern composers in Stockholm were using techniques like dodecaphony (music using all 12 notes equally), serialism (arranging musical elements in a series), and musique concrète (music made from recorded sounds). Famous composers like György Ligeti, John Cage, and Terry Riley even taught these styles in Stockholm.
Eliasson felt that these new techniques were just about rules, not about true music. He believed they weren't "authentic." He said it was a time of "unbearable self-denial" where traditional things like rhythms, melodies, and even certain musical intervals were avoided. He thought this was harmful for how humans naturally hear and enjoy music. He mentioned how composers who didn't follow these new rules, like Allan Pettersson, were sometimes pushed aside.
Selected Works
Anders Eliasson composed many different types of music. Here are some of his notable works:
Orchestra Pieces
- 1968: Exposition for Chamber Orchestra
- 1977: Canti in lontananza (Songs from a Distance) for Small Orchestra
- 1978: Impronta for Orchestra
- 1978: Turnings for Orchestra
Symphonies
- 1984: Sinfonia da camera (Chamber Symphony)
- 1986: Symphony No. 1 for Orchestra
- 1989: Sinfonia concertante: Symphony No. 3 for Alto-Saxophone and Orchestra
- 2005: Symphony No. 4 for Orchestra
Concertos
- 1982: Concerto per fagotto ed archi (Concerto for Bassoon and Strings)
- 1992: Clarinet Concerto – Sette passaggi (Seven Paths) for Clarinet and Orchestra
- 1992: Farfalle e ferro (Butterflies and Iron): Concerto for Horn and Strings
- 2000: Concerto per trombone for Trombone and Orchestra
- 2005: Concerto per violino, piano ed orchestra: Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra
- 2010: Einsame Fahrt / Solitary Journey - Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
Choral Works
- 1979: Canto del Vagabondo in memoriam di Carolus Linnaeus for boy soprano, ladies choir and orchestra
- 1998: Dante anarca: Oratorio for Singers, Mixed Choir and Orchestra
- 2007: Quo vadis for Tenor, Mixed Choir and Orchestra
Works for String Orchestra
- 1981: Desert point for String Orchestra
- 1987: Ostacoli (Obstacles) for String Orchestra
- 2001: Sinfonia per archi (Symphony for Strings)
- 2003: Ein schneller Blick ... ein kurzes Aufscheinen (A Brief Glance ... a Fleeting Vision) for String Orchestra
Selected Chamber Music
- 1970/1992: In medias for solo violin
- 1986: Poem for alto saxophone and piano
- 1991: Quartetto d'archi (String Quartet)
- 2003: Pentagramm for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn and piano
- 2010: Fantasia per sei strumenti (Fantasia for Six Instruments)
- 2012: Trio d´archi `Ahnungen´ (String Trio `Intuitions´)
Music Drama
- 2011: Karolinas sömn (Karolina´s Sleep) for Soprano and Chamber ensemble. This piece was first performed in 2012.
